By attacking France’s sacrosanct public audiovisual television headfirst on his C8 programme, a sacred cow that has long been criticized in hushed tones while feeding people, Hanouna has put his finger where it hurts. This January 17th, under the pen of Jonathan Bouchet-Petersen, Liberation dons the legal robes and flies to the aid of our dear government audiovisual monster.
It must be said that the alarm is bright red. No one in the media world had so directly attacked public service broadcasting, which for decades the French had been urged to concede as being “essential,” “precious,” “of quality,” necessarily “reference,” and “neutral,” of course . “Mostly neutral”! Our public service media (which would be to democracy what a tassel is to a moccasin, an accessory that has become indispensable) like a chain of its strengths disperses from year to year the number of people who support it outside its walls (producers, suppliers , etc.), its audience and its achievements. But when we talk about the public service audience, which is not so brilliant in detail, we have to talk about the cost of the audience, otherwise the argument is meaningless. However, these costs are insane. We must remember the 3.7 billion euros in state funding provided by Hanouna, the approximately 15,000 employees of France Télévisions, Radio France, RFI, Arte and other public broadcasters. Numbers without comparison with the private competitors TF1 or M6.
Hanouna, like Marine Le Pen, would send you to “privatize it all,” he launched in “prime time.” Sacrilege. “It should simply be noted, with Bouchet-Petersen’s nuance, that the public audiovisual service, financed from a multiannual budget since the abolition of the license fee, costs each inhabitant in France less than in most European countries. , especially in Germany, Great Britain and especially Switzerland. “Undeniable. But this budget is still roughly the same as that of prisons in France. Furthermore, while it is a comparison, we should remember that democracy in Biden’s United States does very well without public service broadcasting: it doesn’t exist in Uncle Sam’s land, if North Korea or mainland China make excessive use of it .
Basically, Bouchet-Pertersen is right (again!): The Bolloré Group is indeed in the crosshairs. His channel, CNews, is a nightmare for the Left, who have grown accustomed to the comforts of a public service very, very close to their ideas and a private sector that hasn’t flinched. An opposition channel? horror ! CNews, by making right-wing voices heard, among other things, ignites the small world that likes to be left in circles. Coincidentally, Arcom mobilized, officially for technical reasons, such as respecting political speaking times. But CNews isn’t the only one suffering from the storm. C8, the Hanouna broadcaster, also owned by Bolloré, also suffered the wrath of the audiovisual cop like no other broadcaster until it was banned from broadcasting advertisements on the Hanouna program in 2017. Liberation plays the little music after which the frequencies of the Breton billionaire’s channels, conditionally “lent” by the state, could be withdrawn! An interview with the culture minister in Le Monde actually highlights this spectrum. This never happened, even when TF1 and M6 took significant leeway with their convention.
All of this should seem like a white thread to far-right voters and viewers of the Bolloré channels, who will have a hard time understanding how France Inter can camp so far left on taxpayers’ money when CNews and C8 develop their editorial policies with advertising money… You will remember that the President of Arcom, successor to the CSA, is now directly appointed by … the President of the Republic, Emmanuel Macron. By the decision of a certain… Emmanuel Macron, in 2019. A lockdown to make North Korea and mainland China dream.
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